Friday, November 02, 2012

One of the hardest tasks I find, when dealing with my patients, is trying to "get inside their heads". Frequently, seemingly inexplicable actions are logically explained when you take the patient's "point of view" with regard to things. This does not mean that the patient was correct in what they said or did, rather, their actions were understandable with regard to forces and reasons operating in their head.

The inability to get into the opposite sex's heads, I think, is a real problem amongst many of the commentators in the manosphere, who seem to have a very hard time trying to understand female logic and motivations. Many men assume that women think like they do, and in trying to understand female action project male "logic" onto female minds. Unfortunately, this is wrong. The mounting evidence from neuroscience clearly demonstrates that men and women have different cognitive processes. I think that it is important to come to grasp with these differences in order to understand how we got into the current predicament and how to best combat it.

I have a lot of respect with regard to commentator Dalrock, and his rebuttal to me in the last post was intelligent and thought out. Still I think he errs in his understanding of female motivations.

This goes against what we know, both from a biological perspective and
what the PUAs are telling us. Having sex makes babies, and it stands to
reason that there is a strong biological drive to have sex with men the
woman perceives (psychologically) as the fittest genetic donor. This
is core to your (correct) point that it isn't reasonable for
unattractive betas to demand that women become attracted to them. This
is in fact what they are doing (having sex with the most attractive men
they can get), and also what they tell you they are doing. Yet when
these women have sex based on exactly these constraints, you attribute
it to peer pressure. Biologically they should want to have sex with these men*, yet you are convinced that they really don't.

Firstly, I'm not a big believer in evolutionary explanations of human behaviour. (No, I'm not a Creationist). The evolutionary crowd attribute too much to the genetic imperative and not enough to cognitive, social or emotional reasons. David Buss recently wrote a book on women's sexual motivations and found a multitude of reasons why women have sex. The take home message is that women's sexual motivations are complex and simple "genetic" imperatives are a worthless guide to understanding female motivations

The first mistake many in the androsphere make is in attributing male thought processes onto female minds--it just doesn't work that way: When you enter into a woman's brain it's a totally different world where different forces are at play. For example, it was often assumed in the earlier days of sexual research that female desire was a weaker version of the male type. However, recent psychological research backed up with functional MRI data has showed that this assumption is wrong. Take this fascinating study by Laan. She was able to demonstrate that women seem to be "less connected" to their genitals than men are. Whilst women were able to perceive a sexual stimulus they were less likely to be aware of it. Likewise, compared to men, visual erotic stimuli are processed differently.

Secondly, manosphere commentators need to grasp the importance of social factors in influencing female thought and motivation. Numerous psychological studies have shown that women are more conformist than men. (Google Scholar it). It's not just that women consciously choose to conform, it's that their cognitive processes actually biases their thinking to conform. Female cognitive processes are wired to make exclusion from the "in group" a stressful experience. When men want to punish they physically hurt, when women want to punish they exclude; the pain comes from the effect of group exclusion.

When the fat lard-arses whine about being pressured to conform to social expectation they are simply illustrating this fact. All women want to be pretty and the constant display of beautiful women in the media makes every woman regularly aware of he deficiency with respect to the group ideal. The "pressure" thus felt is generated by her own neurobiology which recognises her "outgroup" status and attempts motivate her toward in-goup behaviours and ideals. Men too, feel this pressure but not to the degree that women do. Men might be horny all the time but women are always trying to stick with the herd.

It is this phenomenon which helps understand the phenomenon of "Erotic Plasticity". Roy Baumeister was the first to introduce the concept. While I think Roy Baumiester's current opinion piece is poorly argued, his papers on "erotic plasticity" are simply superb. Women's sexuality seems "plastic" to a degree that it just isn't in men. And as Baumeister hints in his papers, it is the social milleu in which females operate that strongly molds their erotic desires. From his 2000 paper;

Over half (55%) of women who had coital experience had peer groups who encouraged sexual activity, whereas almost none(3%) of the virgin women associated with such groups.

I would consider that statistically significant. But it would be a mistake to think that this social weighting to their cognition only applies to sexual domain. Fashion, for example, exerts a greater influence on women than men. And it need to be remembered that women frequently dress with regard to the opinion of other women in mind. Romantic trajectories, mothering styles, school and suburb choice are strongly influenced by the in group social script.

Not only is there a pressure to conform, but there seems to be some sort of cognitive mechanism which punishes the women for asserting their individuality. Women will frequently assert that there is something wrong with them if they find dissonance between group sanctioned behaviour and personal displeasure. In Victorian ages, where sexuality purity was idealised, women thought there was something "wrong" with them if they enjoyed sex. Now they wonder if there is something wrong with them if they don't. The whole cognitive mechanism is weighted to bias the group above the individual. It's the cognition of individual subordination.

What this means practically is, when compared to men, women suffer from more cognitive pressure to conform to group norms, and it is this mechanism that explains erotic plasticity. Women can literally be reprogrammed to whatever you want them to be. The secret is not to make it explicit or one on one but rather to highlight a woman's deviancy from the norm. If you want women to engage in any type of deviant sexual practice, then what you have to do is show that all of the girls, especially the popular ones are doing it, and its only the weird one's or the fundies that aren't. Once she has accepted that it is part of "in group" practice, her own biology and cognitive processes will impel her toward the practice even though she might find it personally objectionable. But so strong is this imperative that she will question her own "normalcy" if she doesn't find practice enjoyable.

This is why Sex in the City and Cosmo are far greater moral solvents than hardcore porn. Porn has to appeal to the individual directly, whereas shows like SITC only have to give the appearance of upholding an "in-group" norm to influence female behaviour. In societies where rape is punishable, it is women who are the sexual gatekeepers and the level at which sexually permissibility is set is determined by group norms.

It's this propensity not to override their social imperative, even in the face of obvious self-interest, which I find so interesting in women. Now, I agree that women possess moral agency, and can override their emotions, but it appears that,when it comes to in-group norms, they have a far harder time doing it than men do. It's why I have some sympathy for their predicament. Dammed if they slut, dammed if they don't.

I'm not trying to excuse women for their behaviour, rather I'm trying to get a better understanding of what the motivating factors are. It really is hard for a woman to be good these days, given the current social climate which makes sexual restraint as an "out group" behaviour. Society is really rigged against the good girl.